The Next Three fotoVUE guidebooks

When Stuart’s Photographing The Lake District was going to press in May 2014 we both knew the next step was to find talented photographers and writers to author a series of well-researched, beautifully illustrated and high quality photo-location guidebooks to the whole of the UK and beyond.

If we were to publish books that would be really useful, inspiring and insightful to those who bought them these authors would have to know an area intimately, so that they could pass on their hard won and detailed local knowledge that can take years of exploration.

Over a year we commissioned some of the best photographers and writers – you have to be both to author a fotoVUE photo-location guidebook – in the UK.

It takes time to research, photograph, map and write up a 350+ page fotoVUE guidebook, between 2 and 3 years, it is hard work, but that’s what fotoVUE authors are doing.

And three years on from our first publication we now have five guidebooks out and every one has been well received and all have sold well.

But now all at once, several authors have finished or are close to finishing.

Here’s what is coming up over the next few months.

Photographing The Peak District by Chris Gilbert and Mick Ryan

This is our next publication which will be out early summer. The 550 square miles of the Peak District is a rich and beautiful area for anyone with a camera, from wild heather-clad moorland lined by gritstone edges and boulders that contrast with the limestone plateau and deep dales of the White Peak. This will be our biggest guidebook so far at roughly 500 pages describing over 150 locations from the obvious classics such as the Great Ridge and Higger Tor to many locations that are relatively unknown. Stuart is busy with the layout and Chris and myself are fact-checking and proofing. Pre-orders for this book will be available at the end of May.

Dolomites by James Rushforth

The Dolomites is a beautiful mountain range in northeastern Italy and James Rushforth knows it better than most having authored the best selling climbing guidebook The Dolomites – Rock Climbs and Via Ferrata published by Rockfax. Not only is James a talented photographer –12 international awards and widely published – but he is also doing the layout of his guidebook as well as the writing and photography. James will be finished in late May for publication in the summer. His book features the best locations for valley, village, meadow, stream, high pass and mountain photography in the Dolomites and will be available shortly after the Peak District book is published.

Scotland by Dougie Cunningham

This is another big photo-location guidebook covering the whole of Scotland and will be 500+ pages in length. Dougie Cunningham, winner of the Classic View category of this year’s Landscape Photographer of the Year competition, was the man to take on this mammoth task.

Why the whole of Scotland rather than a series of small guidebooks? Well, whether you live in Scotland or are travelling from the south, we thought a single book would give you a great planning tool with the most options considering the vagaries of weather. If you are heading for Skye and the weather is rubbish, with this guidebook the information is there if you change plans and head for Glen Coe.

Areas covered include: the Lowlands including Fife, Lothian, Arran, Dumfries and Galloway, and the Borders; the Eastern Highland areas of the Cairngorms and the Aberdeenshire Coast; the Western Highlands including the Road to Skye, Glen Coe, Perthshire, and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs; the Western Isles of Lewis and Harris, Skye, Mull, Jura and Islay and finally Northern Scotland including Shetland, the Orkneys, Caithness, Assynt, and Ross and Cromarty.

It’s a book full of beautiful landscapes from glen to mountain top, lochs and coast, haggis and whisky, thistles and tartan, bagpipes and folk with ginger hair – a humongous effort by Dougie who started this project back in 2014. Layout has started and Photographing Scotland will be available after James’ Dolomites book.

Then it’s South Wales by Drew Buckley, Snowdonia Mountains by Nick Livesey – our first photo-location-hill walkers hybrid guidebook, Anita Nicholson’s Northumberland, Photographing London by George Johnson, Yorkshire Dales by Lizzie Shepherd and Oliver Wright – but more on those books and East Anglia by Justin Minns, Cotswolds by Sarah Howard, Western Ireland by Carsten Krieger, Kent by Alex Hare, Surrey and Sussex by Beata Moore……in a few weeks time.

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Author

Mick Ryan

Director of fotoVUE and Co-author of Photographing The Peak District

Mick Ryan is the founder and a co-director of fotoVUE. He is based in Calderdale having spent the last seven years in the Peak District. He also spends part of the year in Saratoga Springs, upstate New York.
He is the founder of Rockfax guidebooks and introduced well-designed large-format photo-topo...